Ivana Bacik (Independent)

I thank the Minister for coming to the House today and his presence here has solved a mystery for me. My question pertains to the universality of child benefit and initially I had addressed it to the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children with responsibility for children, Deputy Brendan Smith, because neither I nor the groups on whose information I am working were clear as to who was responsible for this issue within the Government. I am grateful to the Minister for coming into the House and taking responsibility for this issue.

Essentially this issue concerns the universality of child benefit. The Government's National Children's Strategy 2000-10 states: "...child benefit is an important means of reducing child poverty and supporting the welfare of children, given its universal coverage and its neutral relationship to both the employment incentive and decisions regarding family formation". These words are highly important and all Members would subscribe to them. However, in recent years, child benefit has not been applied universally. A small number of children exist, who perhaps are the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, to whom child benefit is not made available. This is because of the habitual residence condition. I raised this issue on the Order of Business on universal children's day two days ago and a number of groups have been campaigning for the restoration of child benefit to the aforementioned small group of children. The campaigning groups are led by the free legal advice centres, FLAC, but also include the Vincentian Refugee Centre, the Immigrant Council of Ireland, Barnardos and the Children's Rights Alliance.

Their campaign concerns the habitual residence condition, which I understand was introduced in 2004. Its initial purpose was to prevent social welfare payments, including child benefit, being made unless persons could demonstrate two years' habitual residence in Ireland. Following legal advice, it became clear that the habitual residence condition could not apply to children whose parents were from EU member states or the European Economic Area. Consequently, such parents are not subjected to this condition. However, a small number — the free legal advice centres estimate between 2,000 and 3,000 children — remain deprived of the benefit because of the application of the habitual residence condition. Most of the children concerned are the children of asylum seekers or those seeking humanitarian leave to remain. FLAC found figures showing that at the end of September 2007, just 2,019 such children were in this category and were deprived of child benefit. The point made by FLAC and the other groups is that the deprivation of child benefit to the parents of such children has had a severe effect on them because many of them already exist on direct provision and are therefore already on extremely low incomes. They cannot afford to buy basic essentials such as food, schooling and medical requirements. Were child benefit restored to them, they would be able to so do.

My question also concerns the extent to which the Government had considered its international human rights obligations when taking this policy approach to these children. Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Ireland ratified in 1992, provides that children's rights should be respected without discrimination of any kind. Moreover, Article 26 states that children have the right to benefit from social security. It is clear from the convention that governments should not discriminate against children on the basis of the immigration status or otherwise of their parents. In effect, however, the application of this condition has deprived a particular small group of children of what should be a universal benefit and what the Government has referred to as an important plank of the strategy to remove children from poverty.

I ask the Minister the reason the Government has not considered the rights of the child in the application of this policy. I also ask the Minister to consider whether the implementation of this policy has in effect broken not only the Government's own promises contained in the national children's strategy, but also our international human rights commitments to children, namely, to ensure they are entitled to social benefits without any discrimination based on parental status.